Known ringback tone services allow a called party to preselect a ringback tone to be played to a calling party. Traditionally, the calling party would hear a standard ringback sound before the called party answers the call. The ringback tone service replaces that standard ringback sound with a ringback tone selected by the called party. For example, the ringback tone service allows the called party to customize the ringback sound that the calling party hears during the ringing phase of a call to the called party. The calling party hears the ringback tone preselected by the called party while waiting for the called party to answer.
After hearing the ringback tone on the call, the calling party may like the ringback tone. However, the calling party may not recognize the ringback tone. Therefore, the calling party may want to learn the identification details of the ringback tone. For example, where the ringback tone is a song, the calling party may want to know the name of the song and/or the name of the artist. Also, where the calling party is a ringback tone service subscriber, the subscriber may want to learn the identification details so that the subscriber can purchase the ringback tone and in turn subsequently provide the same ringback tone to other callers that call the subscriber.
If the calling party does not recognize the ringback tone, then the called party may attempt to learn the identification details by contacting the called party to ask about the ringback tone. As one shortcoming, asking the called party about the ringback tone may be inconvenient for both the calling party and the called party. As another shortcoming, the called party may not know or remember the identification details for the ringback tone that was played on the call. For example, the ringback tone service may have randomly selected the ringback tone from a jukebox for the call. As another example, several short segments of the same song may exist as available ringback tones and the subscriber may not be able to identify which segment was played on the call.
Thus, a need exists for a ringback tone service with an increased availability of identification information of the ringback tones that are played to calling parties.